How did you decide on your budget?

I felt uncomfortable spending anything over 5K so that's what I suggested as our budget. FH was thinking we would spend double that so he was very pleased with 5K-not a single complaint.

We're both very practical and didn't want to use any savings or credit (obvs). Our budget was actually sort of a random number of what we thought everything would cost. It hasn't really changed since we started planning, but our entire budget came from what we could save during the engagement. FH has way more disposable income than I, so it hasn't been much of a stretch for him, but I've had to plan and budget for the stuff I am paying for. We're paying for the wedding ourselves, although my mom split the cost of my dress with me, and some family friends gave us a couple hundred. We're saving for a house right now (which are at least $400K in our area), so that's the priority over wedding. Makes it easier to keep things in perspective, but mostly our budget boils down to what we are comfortable spending on one day.

It depend on what you want and what you can afford.

Considering I have student loans to pay off, I picked an amount that wouldn't make me feel guilty - 5k. Anything over would have been poor judgement on my part.

For us, it comes down to do we want to have some money for eventual moving expenses and a start on a down payment for a house, or do we want all our savings wiped out for the one day? I can't justify it, but have had people give me what I think is terrible advice to just accept that my wedding will be at least 15-20K. Um, no... That same person is stressed and still in debt 5 years later because they spent way more than they had to have a 200+ person gala. The most important thing is to not start your married life under the stress of debt, and to still have some savings to fall back on.

That being said, there's a big difference between the two budgets you and your FH came up with. Amount of guests and catering is what can take a 10K wedding to a 30K wedding faster than... something really fast... I guess talk to him and focus more on what priorities you each have for the day, rather than the number to reach a consensus.

I think you have to be realistic about what you want and what that costs is your area. That is the only way you are going to be able to stick to your budget. While we set our budget based I what we could afford we also looked at what that would get us. We want a dinner evening reception and in my area that just isn't possible for $5-10k. We have managed to stay well under budget in many areas because we had a realistic budget.

For us we knew well ahead of time what venue we wanted and the general cost of what that would be for us. Then I based everything else off of what I thought was reasonable and doable. For us. We had the venue amount put away before I even booked. So as long as that was covered everything else was flexible. I am a stay at home mom, and the nature of DH's job is such that he can make barely enough to get by on one month, and the next month make enough to support us easily for 4 or 5 months. So we weren't really able to say we could contribute X amount each month. We had to either have it already set aside or be willing to be flexible about it depending on how the next few months went.